My name is Francesco Puppi, I’m a professional trail runner for Nike and a head coach for Vert. In my athletic career I have specialized in any distance that is defined as “short trail”, or what in Europe we refer to as “mountain running”: short trail races, up to the 50k distance. But my favorite distance might be the mountain marathon. Why? Because they are a lot of fun to race and train for–and they are intense, various and generally not too hard to recover from, so you can definitely do more than one per year. In this post I will talk all about it!

A good aid station plan can make a great race out of one that you thought about dropping out of earlier on. A poor strategy can cause you to have to drop from lack of fueling needs, unattended injuries, or faulty equipment. Plan for what you can, train consistently, and anything else that happens is out of your control. Enjoy the process and learn forward!

One of our main goals and missions at Vert.run is to demystify the sport of trail running and ultrarunning, and to open the door really wide and show you that you belong here too. And one of the ways that we do that is by making as much information as accessible as we can for you. In this blog post, we’re going to walk through some FAQs that trail runners of all levels have about nutrition–and even if you’re an experienced veteran ultrarunner, there’s good info in here for you, too.